M Hannis

“Mathematics maybe, but not money”: On balance sheets, numbers and nature in ecological accounting

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to consider and compare different ways of using numbers to value aspects of nature-beyond-the-human through case analysis of ecological and natural capital accounting practices in the UK that create standardised numerical-economic values for beyond-human natures. In addition, to contrast underlying ontological and ethical assumptions of these arithmetical approaches in ecological accounting with those associated with Pythagorean nature-numbering practices and fractal geometry. In doing so, to draw out distinctions between arithmetical and geometrical ontologies of nature and their relevance for “valuing nature”. Design/methodology/approach - Close reading and review of policy texts and associated calculations in: UK natural capital accounts for “opening stock” inventories in 2007 and 2014; and in the experimental implementation of biodiversity offsetting (BDO) in land-use planning in England. Tracking the iterative calculations of biodiversity offset requirements in a specific planning case. Conceptual review, drawing on and contrasting different numbering practices being applied so as to generate numerical-economic values for natures-beyond-the-human. Findings - In the cases of ecological accounting practices analysed here, the natures thus numbered are valued and “accounted for” using arithmetical methodologies that create commensurability and facilitate appropriation of the values so created. Notions of non-monetary value, and associated practices, are marginalised. Instead of creating standardisation and clarity, however, the accounting practices considered here for natural capital accounts and BDO create nature-signalling numbers that are struggled over and contested. Originality/value - This is the first critical engagement with the specific policy texts and case applications considered here, and, the authors believe, the first attempt to contrast arithmetical and geometrical numbering practices in their application to the understanding and valuing of natures-beyond-the-human.

Public provision of environmental goods: Neutrality or sustainability? a reply to david miller

Abstract Theorists of liberal neutrality, including in this context David Miller, claim that it is unjust for environmental policy to privilege a particular conception of the good by appealing to normative principles derived from any substantive conception of human flourishing. However, analysis of Millers arguments reveals the inability of procedural justice thus understood to adequately engage with the complex and contested issue of the relationship between human beings and the rest of the world. Millers attempt to distinguish categories of public goods generally, and environmental goods in particular, according to the possibility of reasonable disagreement, is seriously flawed. It results in an inability to distinguish between want-regarding and ideal-regarding justifications for the public provision of environmental goods, and more generally, an inability to recognise ecological sustainability as an important aspect of the common good. Effective environmental policy is not rendered illegitimate or unjust by incompatibility with liberal neutrality.

After development? In defence of sustainability

ABSTRACTThe Paris Agreement was a success only for the carbon traders, sequestrators and geoengineers who are now expected to ‘balance emissions with removals’ by 2050, against a background of continued economic growth. If this is sustainable development, it is indeed discredited. But the problem is with the ‘sustainable development’ paradigm, not with the idea of sustainability. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals explicitly call for intensified economic growth and are clearly incompatible with the allegedly overarching goal of ecological sustainability. To aim at this very different goal is simply to aim at living in a way that does not contain the seeds of its own destruction. Far from invalidating this objective, diagnoses of crisis make its pursuit more urgent than ever. ‘Why aim at sustainability?’ is an odd question to pose, but one that may nonetheless produce illuminating answers. One answer derives from intergenerational obligations, but this may not even be the most important. An orientation...